As anyone who lives in a congested and overpopulated city can attest, parking is at a premium as of late in many neighborhoods. The lack of conveniently available and low or no-cost street parking spaces means people are parking literally on top of each other and cramming their cars into parking spaces too small to comfortably get in and out of.
As most street parking consists of parallel parking spots, a driver's parking skills and spatial judgement are put to the test daily and a vehicle's front and rear bumpers are often susceptible to contact with other parking or parked vehicles. Even the most skilled drivers, can misjudge or commit error when the available space and vehicle size are a close mismatch, leading to unwanted and often damaging vehicle to vehicle contact. This low velocity vehicle to vehicle contact is no longer a rarity, it occurs every day on every overly congested street where parking is at a shortage. It cannot therefore be regarded as accidental as the parking driver is well aware they are hitting stationary vehicles, sometimes multiple repetitive times, and generally their expected goal is to minimize contact and limit damage as opposed to genuinely expecting to avoid the parked cars altogether. In common slang this type of contact is referred to as a “love tap” denoting a non-intention to cause any harm but acknowledging the unavoidable necessity to make contact with the stationary vehicle or vehicles. Compounding the problem is the fact that the automobiles of today are being produced with light weight painted plastic bumper covers which are highly susceptible to damage from vehicle to vehicle contact during parallel parking. Although this damage is generally only paint damage and minor surface lacerations of the vehicle's plastic bumper cover, the accumulation of these minor scratches can strongly detract from a vehicle's overall appearance and cause the owner victim to either be unhappy with the appearance of their vehicle or force them to pay continuously for costly paint and surface repairs at a professional auto body shop. The high incidence of these minor parking incidents in major cities and areas where parking is at a premium, have led to the marketing of bumper protection guards.
Several products now exist and are growing in popularity for the protection of painted vehicle bumpers. For the rear bumper of the vehicle, the most popular by sheer number are essentially rubber mat shrouds which hang out of a vehicles trunk suspended by straps which adhere to the vehicles trunk carpet liner. These products are inexpensive and universal in size, yet they only protect the rear portion of the vehicle's bumper and thereby completely neglect the corners and sides of the bumper which are most highly susceptible to damage from parallel parking maneuvers. When a vehicle's license plate is mounted on the actual rear bumper of,the vehicle (not mounted on the vehicle's trunk), a rectangular hole or void in the guard to expose the license plate must be cut-out of the rubber mat shroud by the installer. The location of this hole is typically dictated by the guard's manufacturer, and does not always correspond properly to the best positioning for all vehicles (vehicles of different size, make and model have varying height and placement of their license plates), sometimes forcing the user to either partially obstruct their license plate or in an effort to not obstruct their license plate—not cover as much area of the bumper as they would have desired.
For the front bumper of the car many protective license plate frames exist and are popular. These are generally constructed of either rubber or a dense semi-rigid, energy-absorbing foam. They can typically extend off the face of the bumper by as much as 2.25 inches. These deeper products, although boasting the most protection, can often obstruct the visibility of the license plate from the sides and perspective angles of view. Although some are designed to be wider than typical license plate frames, their protection area is limited to the center of the bumper where the license plate resides. During parallel parking the angle of entry or exit of the parking space (generally around forty five degrees) makes the corners of the stationary car the first and most likely victim of initial “accidental” contact. Therefore, a vehicle's bumper is not fully protected when only the center rear of the vehicle is being covered by these popular rubber mat shrouds or the center front is only protected by a rubber/foam license plate frame.
Properly protecting a vehicles entire bumper is a challenge when convenience of use, aesthetics, and non-permanence of installation are all considered paramount design considerations. Other products which have been designed to cover the entire or most of the vehicles bumper, have failed to satisfy demanding consumer's preferences. Some available products must be purchased in limited available specific sizes (based upon the guards manufacturers' opinions of what constitutes a small, medium, or large vehicle), which does not ensure a desired custom fit length and truly guarantee the complete protection the consumer desires. The same style of “complete coverage” bumper cover when used for the front of the vehicle, requires that the license plate be removed and mounted atop the bumper guard which guarantees its secure connection to the vehicle using the license plate mounting screws—but makes removal difficult and cumbersome so they are impractical for regularly washing a vehicle. Not being able to easily remove the guard means that dirt trapped behind the guard remains there indefinitely causing scratching and damage to the paint. Those rubber mat shroud guards and other variations of guards that are easily removable, are also generally intended for use only once parked—they are intended and marketed only as “defensive”, for the purpose of protecting a stationary vehicle from falling victim to another driver's “offensive” contact. The manufacturers of these guards specifically warn against driving the vehicle with these guards attached, as they have not been designed to be securely attached to the vehicle and cannot be safely used while driving the vehicle. Therefore, these products offer no protection for the offensive mobile vehicle which may itself be committing the offending contact while parking in a tight spot. Many of these products are also generally oversized, heavy, and bulky and take up too much trunk space when not in use, and for many users can be difficult to attach and detach from the vehicle without a second individual's assistance. Furthermore, as many of these products are designed for parking garage use and not for street parking or other outdoor use, their materials of construction are not intended to ever get wet from the rain limiting their benefit to a street parker.